Windows NT 4.0 Self-Paced Training Kits

People frequently ask me, "What's a good way to learn about
Windows NT?" Several approaches are available, some of which we discussed
in the training and support focus in July 1996. One method is the Microsoft
self-paced training kits. I reviewed the NT 3.51 training kit in "Too Busy
for Class? Learn at Home," December 1995. This month I reveal how the new
NT 4.0 training kits measure up.

Q: What Is in the Self-Paced Kits?

With NT 4.0, Microsoft offers two kits. Each contains a training manual and
a CD-ROM with the course labs and support materials. The courses offered at
Microsoft Authorized Technical Education Centers (ATECs) do not divide neatly
into Workstation and Server courses, which makes sense because so much overlap
exists with no clear dividing line between the two versions of NT. The two
self-paced courses follow this same pattern.

Microsoft offers a "Windows NT Technical Support Training" course
and a "Windows NT Network Administration Training" course. The
technical support course includes a 773-page training manual; a CD-ROM with the
labs, videos, and other supporting materials; and 120-day evaluation copies of
NT Workstation and NT Server. The network administration course includes a
519-page training manual, a CD-ROM that contains the course materials, and a
120-day evaluation copy of NT Server.

The courses include simulations of certain activities, such as configuring
fault tolerance disk arrays, that let you perform the steps without having the
resources available on your computer. Although Microsoft intended the
simulations to be run from Internet Explorer (IE), as Screen 1 shows,
you can run the labs and examples from the NT Explorer interface if you prefer.

Q: Which One Should I Buy?

If your primary responsibility is installing, configuring, and maintaining
NT and the applications that users run on their computers, Microsoft designed
the technical support course for you. If you are more concerned with your
network's people aspects such as user accounts, groups, permissions, access
rights, and auditing, the network administration package is the one to buy.

Q: What Do I Need to Run the Courses?

For the network administration course, you need one computer capable of
running NT Server 4.0. For a few exercises, you'll need a second computer, but
you have the option of skipping these exercises. The technical support course
requires two computers: one conFigured to run NT Server 4.0 and the other to
dual-boot NT Server 4.0 and NT Workstation 4.0. Each computer will need about
450MB of disk space, and you must partition the disk on the workstation computer
into drives C and D plus some free space. Obviously, you must network the two
computers and ideally keep them separate from the rest of your network to ensure
that nothing you do affects other users. You need a sound card and speakers if
you want to run the videos that come with the course. If your NT systems do not
support multimedia, you can run the videos and simulations on a Windows 95
computer. In case you cannot use two dedicated computers and have to use
existing computers on the corporate network, you can remove the course
materials, shortcuts, and so forth from the computers when you finish the
course.

Q: How Are the Courses Presented?

Unlike the classroom courses, which have a presentation followed by a lab,
the self-paced courses are more hands-on, with practice exercises and labs
interwoven into the text. Each chapter includes review questions, and Microsoft
provides the answers at the end of each chapter.

Q: What Does the Technical Support Course Cover?

First, let's look at the technical support course. After a brief overview of
NT, the course covers installation in detail. It provides simulations of both
Workstation and Server installation, and the simulations are realistic enough to
make you wonder whether you're installing NT again, as Screen 2 shows. If you
cannot install NT on the computer you use for the course, the simulations make a
good substitute, and they run a lot faster than the real thing.

The training manual explains unattended NT installation from a central
server and the use of answer files and uniqueness database files (UDFs) to
automate the network installation process. The manual fails to mention the
sysdiff utility for unattended software installation. Yet this tool is on the
list of topics that Microsoft can include on the Workstation exam. Continuing
the systems administrator theme, the course covers how to conFigure NT from the
Control Panel and through the Registry and shows how to use System Policies to
control the configuration for end users.

The training course covers managing file systems, partitions, disks, and
disk arrays, including stripe and volume sets and fault tolerance. The course
also illustrates these concepts with simulations that are useful if you do not
have three or four hard disks in your computer. The course even demonstrates
supporting both 16-bit and 32-bit applications, with some interesting applets
that cause general protection faults or system hangs in the 16-bit window but
not in NT.

Networking configuration and troubleshooting take a significant amount of
time and resources from any technical support organization. After introducing
the NT networking architecture, the training manual discusses NetBEUI, NWLink,
and TCP/IP in depth. Under Networking Services, the training manual groups the
TCP/IP components such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Windows
Internet Name Service (WINS), and Domain Name System (DNS). The course includes
the Browser Service, but only briefly, even though the service contributes a
substantial share of network traffic. The course demonstrates Remote Access
Service (RAS) services, including the configuration of the various dial-in
protocols, using a null modem cable between the two computers.

The section on the Internet, including the installation of Internet
Information Server (IIS) and IE, underlines Microsoft's commitment to pushing
the Internet technology into everything we do, like it or not. Indeed, the
introduction to NT Server at the start of the book states, "The integration
of IIS with Windows NT Server 4.0 means that Web Server installation and
management is simply another part of the operating system." The fact that
IIS will run only on NT does not make IIS integrated, in my opinion, and I see
the program as another application, not as part of the operating system. Before
you connect your corporate network to the Internet, you'll probably want more
information than the course provides.

Many NT installations occur in existing networks, so the section on
interoperating with Novell NetWare will interest many systems administrators.
Screen 3 shows the simulation that lets you perform the installation and
configuration steps for Client Services for NetWare without having
administrative access to a NetWare server.

The section on network clients includes a discussion of licensing and
licensing replication that I have not seen anywhere else. It includes license
groups and how to use the license manager utility to keep track of licensing
across multiple servers. And when you get to file synchronization and directory
replication, the course has an introduction to Briefcase, another topic not
often mentioned. (For more information on Briefcase, see "Windows NT
Briefcase," August 1997.) Replication requires two computers. I suggest you
work through this clear explanation and the exercises, because the replication
process works for some people but not for others, even when they apparently
follow the same directions.

Any technical support course would be incomplete without a discussion of
troubleshooting, and this course allocates space in several chapters to the
topic, beginning with a detailed discussion of the NT boot process. The boot
process can be the most difficult part of NT to diagnose because if you cannot
boot the system, you cannot use the NT diagnostic tools. However, a good
understanding of the boot process will make most problems easy to identify.

Q: What Does the Network Administration Course Cover?

The focus of the network administration course is different from the
technical support course. Network administration does not go into technical
details, but rather concentrates on the tasks the system administrator faces.
Beginning with the logon process, the emphasis is on setting up user accounts
and group accounts. By the end of this section, you'll know the difference
between local and global groups, where to use each one, and how to use the
built-in groups that NT installs by default. This course thoroughly covers
setting up account policies but has only a cursory discussion of domains that
refers only to administering domain controllers.

The course covers setting and administering permissions, with both NTFS
permissions and share permissions discussed in detail, and explains their
interaction. Network printing gets two chapters, although one is probably
sufficient. The course continues with a discussion of auditing the users and
monitoring resource use from a system perspective. This course rounds out the
administrator's tasks with the Backup and Restore programs. Again, assuming that
you might not have a tape drive available, the course provides a useful
simulation, as Screen 4 shows.

Q: Will I Be Able to Pass the Exams After Studying with These Courses? Will
They Help Me Do My Job?

As far as passing the exam is concerned, the self-paced course will help.
But to be sure, I recommend that you supplement these courses with further
reading and hands-on experience. The packaging for these courses states that
they'll help you pass the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) exams--not enable
you to pass the exams, just help. And the exams mentioned are the
Workstation and Server exams, not the NT Enterprise exam.

In particular, the network administration course falls far short of
providing the information that you need to administer a network and that
Microsoft bases exam questions on. The most glaring omission is that the course
hardly mentions domains and fails to mention trust relationships, which are
crucial to a complete understanding of the domain model. This omission, which
also occurs in the 803 Windows NT Administration course the ATECs give, seems to
reflect an attitude at Microsoft that domains and trusts are too complex for the
average person to understand. This assumption is certainly not true. Whatever
the reason for this omission, I cannot recommend this course until Microsoft
revises it to include the information that a systems administrator needs to
complete network setup and configuration.

Both the Server exam and, to a greater extent, the Enterprise exam contain
questions on domains and trust relationships that you will not be able to answer
unless you have supplemented your studies with other materials. If Microsoft
omits domains and trust relationships from the courseware, why are these topics
on the exam?

As for helping you do your job, yes, these courses will help you. The
technical support course meets expectations fairly well and covers most of the
topics a support person needs to get started with an NT installation. The
network administration course is adequate as far as it goes, but only for
day-to-day systems administration. This course does not go far enough for anyone
planning a multidomain network.

The Bottom Line
The technical support course is a good value; the network administration
course is less so. Will these courses work for you? If you do not have time to
take a class or if you study better at your own pace, these courses can work for
you. They fall short of a classroom setting because you have no interaction with
other students or additional insights from an instructor. With self-study, you
can repeat modules as often as you like, whenever you want. Are these courses
better than just reading third-party books? In some ways, the answer is yes,
because the courses provide a lot of hands-on experience, which is the best way
for most people to learn. Perhaps the best approach is to learn from these
self-paced kits and then supplement that knowledge with some of the more
advanced third-party books.